Kale

[Brewingale]

When I grew up in the 70's there were several dairy farms around here within 5 miles of my home. Some with 20 cows some with 200. Nearly all of these grew kale to feed in the winter. Most of them strip grazed it and the rest used to run over it with the rota flail and cart back to the yard. Now sadly the nearest dairy farm is over 12 miles away. How things change. I'm interested to know if there are still parts of the UK were kale is grown and fed in this manner. I know during these years maize has hit the scene, but is it to the detriment of kale,

[powerrabbit]

As a now retired dairy farmer and my Father before me I have had a lifetime experience of this subject. When my parents bought the farm, took it over and moved in we started off with 15 milking cows and milked them in an open bail at the bottom of a field near the house, this was in the very early spring of 1961 and the next winter, 1962/3 was the year that we had a very severe winter that started with very heavy snow on Boxing Day '62 and lasted until mid March '63, I remember walking to the Village a mile for loaves of bread with my Sister and following the telephone poles along the line of the road, the snow was so deep that we could kick the insulators on the tops of the poles, we were off school for 19 weeks. I remember right from the very start that we used to till a field of kale every year, it was always said that kale was not terribly good for milk production but the 'boffins' were very wrong, our cows milked better when on kale and the butterfat content of the milk increased. We used to buy the kale seed in one pound paper bags in the beginning, that's how it was supplied, it was dressed with a white dust that choked you if it went up your nose, this was to stop the 'flea beetle' from destroying it as it germinated and emerged. I think we tilled it at the rate of a pounds per acre, mixed it in with the 'general' fertiliser and broadcast it with the Teagle fertiliser spinner, 4cwt per acre, the Teagle held 4cwt so it was easy to work out as we applied it at 4cwt an acre mixing in a pound of kale seed. When at the 3rd 'true leaf' stage we would then spray it with a white chemical powder called 'Semeron', this was to kill any unwanted weed which if untreated would soon overtake the kale, the biggest weed problem was Fat Hen or 'lambstongue' as we call it, this weed always seemed to grow in kale more so than in any other crop, I think it was because we used to spread all the winter dung on the kale field and the lambstonge seed was in the dung from the millers nuts we fed the cows in the parlour. This spray would not kill Shepherds Purse or Charlock as both these weeds are the same family as kale, the brassica family (cabbage) We never reckoned on starting to feed the kale until just after Christmas, depending on how mild it was up 'til that time, and would always start by cutting a corridor through it by hand with a hook and carting in the link box to the cows in order to make enough clear room in the field for the cows not to spoil any, we strip grazed it with an electric fence once a day moving the fence up to the 'face' each day, the cows always managed to eat about a yard further into the kale and just a tongue's length further. We left them grazing in the field just long enough for them to clear their days 'allocation' and then turn them back into a grass field with half a dozen bales of hay spread for them. A field full of very content and full cows lying down and belching kale fumes, I can still smell them now in my mind! A four acre field would last at this grazing rate up until the last week in April, after that any remaining kale was starting to go to flower and flowering kale is no good for in calf cows as the Aestrogen content in the flowers would make them abort if you're not careful. We used to till a variety called Marrowstem, it had a stem as big around as a mans arm, a crown of leaves as big as a patio umbrella and grew to around five feet high. The other popular variety that others used to grow was Thousandhead, this was a variety that was a cross between Marrowstem and the Brussel Sprout. There are now no dairy farms anywhere within 50 miles of me now except for a large one that started up between me and the village a few years ago. No-one makes pit or clamp silage anymore either, everything is in big round bales nowadays. How things have changed. I gave up milking cows in 1997 just after my Father died, it's not much fun on your own milking, had I been 10 years younger I would have probably carried on but the overheads and restrictions imposed upon us from the EU was at the time making a small herd of 44 cows and a small acreage uneconomical, we could not expand to stand still without expanding the herd and on the acreage would have been unsustainable.

[Brewingale]

Nice piece of writing Tim. I love hearing about past farming methods from people that actually lived it.

[powerrabbit]

Apologies for nearly writing a book but some things just have to be told to bring things together. We even used to eat kale ourselves, most days whilst out moving the fence in the kale we would take a bucket and select the cleanest bushiest 'hearts', snap them off and put in the bucket, take it in to Mother who would cook it to go with the roast dinner, we used to get a lot of visitors, especially over the weekends, well, you don't live in one place for three generations without gathering a large circle of friends plus most of our relations were also local, and all would go away with something, either a cabbage, spuds, peas or something else from the garden and in the season bagful's of kale, they seemed to know when crops were ready to eat and knew where to come to get it, the favour was always generally returned though, either with a dozen eggs, a nice big fruit cake or a couple of jars of honey.

[Light Land]

Good topic, 000"s of ha of kale for feeding off over winter is grown here as it's cheap to grow and stock love it. 20t/ha of dry mater crops that stand over the cows heads are not unusual.

[powerrabbit]

In the 1970's when the big baler came into being a lot of experimenting with making kale silage went on, big bale wrapped kale silage was done but was not very successful, the stalks poked through the wrap and the kale would not bale and compress tight enough to keep the air out like grass, it was too coarse a material. If I remember rightly a good crop of kale was about 23% dry matter, whatever it's nutrient values the cows liked it and milked well on it, that's the main thing.

[Brewingale]

I don't remember it being baled around here. Nearly every dairy famer here had a Kidd rota flail so, it was just ripped up and carted. I don't recall it ever being clamped, just fed direct to the stock pens.

[Light Land]

A few here make pit silage from kale. One farm I worked on a few years ago tried it on 60ha they even had Claas out from Germany to watch it go through one of there choppers. It was a real job to pack down in the pit if I recall but it didn't poke out the 2 layer cover.

[Jdeere6910]

Most kale with us is grown by sheep farmers that lamb early to fatten lambs for the Easter market.

Coming from the modern high input high output Holstein way of farming, Kale isn't an economic crop for us. All the land which we rent that is able to grow brassicas for forage is away from the farm so grazing isn't practical. We have to compete for rented land with root crop farms and arable that put in high rents for short term generally so our options on the rented ground have to deliver a high feed value especially energy and dry matter. Because of this cropping tends to be whole crop grains or maize if high energy is needed or legumes for whole crop where protein is the priority. Other plus points for these crops is we can ensile them for feeding throughout the year to the milking herd where crops such as kale would only be of greater use to heifers or dry stock which have lower nutritional requirements hence are fed a "maintenance diet" which is complete for the needs of the animal but not overly wasteful.

Other problems I can see with kale is the actual grazing, as it is grazed later on in the season there is a high risk of poaching meaning land is harder to cultivate and soil structure is destroyed. Also to receive single farm payment farms have to conform to cross compliance regulations which include controls on soil erosion and nutrient leaching which is often a problem on intensively grazed catch crops later on the season. Achieving high dry matter intakes due to the low dry matter of the crop may be a problem for cows which have a greater Holstein influence in their breeding.

However I'm sure in many farms which make can effectively make use of kale and other brassicas for grazing dairy cattle especially those using New Zealand style grazing systems or block calving, but in our case this isn't a viable option.

Hope this has given a bit of a modern perspective to the excellent posts so far.

[SPN]

I remember my Grandfather growing kale in the late 60s or early 70s. I don't remember seeing the crop, but I do remember the kale cutter he had for harvesting it.

 

 

In the 1980s we removed the cutting mechanism and used it for hauling bales of hay back to the yard. We designed a quick release top link, based on an old MF fixed hole top link encased in box iron with a spring loaded pin. I'd arrive into the yard, stand on a steering brake, whip around, hit the quick release, and drop the bales beside the elevator, lower the buckrake to reset the top link, and away back to the field. But now I'm getting away from the kale story. Good memories of warm summers though.

[robbo]

This is a really interesting thread, thanks to everyone who has contributed so far

[Light Land]

Agreed mike. One progressive dairy farm all year round milking 1800 cows (usa genetics) I've meet a few times was telling me that he now has gone back to cutting and carrying rape in summer and kale in winter as his farm has grown to large to make walking the cows not and option. His puma 165 with front mower and loader wagon on the back drop the kale off at the face of the silage clamp and it is mixed up in the mixer wagon and feed out in the courts after the cows come out from milking. 

[powerrabbit]

The Twose buckrake (when they were blue) had a tip release spring return handle, as did the old Patterson buckrake. Many sheep farmers here, especially on the margins and within Dartmoor still till a fair amount of kale, rape kale to be precise, every year and when they've grazed it off plough the field and till to barley, years ago it would be a mix of rape kale and sweedes but sweeds seemed to have been dropped now. Feeding kale to cows by strip grazing  can present a poaching problem and we all know what a field of mud is like for dairy cows, that's why you don't let the cows stay in the kale field for any longer than it takes them to consume what you've allocated them that day, even if it is streaming down with rain, they are in and out and back in the yard on their silage or in the grass field, keeping any poaching to a minimum. We used to find, and did so every year, that on a small acreage, you had to sacrifice one field a year through the winter and by the time it was dry enough to get onto it, it was usually the end of May into the first week or so of June, this is the right time for tilling kale and it usually came to start feeding it anywhere between late October and Christmas, depending on the weather and the size of the field, finished by early the following April, around Easter usually, then the field would be ploughed and tilled to barley which at the same time would be under sown with grass, by the time the barley was harvested in late August or early September you had an established ley already there and then between late September and Christmas we would have an Uncles sheep in to keep, they would provide a little income boost and break up the barley stubble, weaned lambs were the ideal candidates as they would fatten ready for market on the lush young grass. Win win.